Brass Tacks

What is it about the music used in this clip, Title Music from A Clockwork Orange by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos, that makes so many companies want to claim the copyright? There are plenty of videos on YouTube that use incidental music, and plenty of others where the music isn’t just incidental, it’s all there … Continue reading ‘Kids’ YouTube clip hit by another music copyright warning!→

In many Durham mining villages residents are suffering from planning blight, whilst in Macclesfield, architect Rod Hackney refurbishes old houses and communities. As Langley Park’s Railway Street faces the bulldozers, we ask should local authorities demolish old housing or renovate instead?

JOBLESS teenagers hope to give ailing Wearside a television tonic. They believe there is plenty in Sunderland to smile about and to prove it they are to make a film of life in the town. The film makers then plan to send their documentary to the BBC in answer to a film about the town called “Are the Kids All Right” which painted a dismal picture of dole queues and street fights. Danny Dixon, a member of Southwick Neighbourhood Youth Projects (SNYP) explained yesterday that the youngsters were so annoyed by the BBC film that

These four 16-year-old punk rockers might look dejected. But soon they may find it difficult to live down to the name of their group . . .The Rejected. For they performed a song they wrote – about the plight of jobless teenagers like themselves in their home town of Sunderland – on a BBC-2 documentary last week. And now three recording companies are interested in the boys who

A TELEVISION documentary which painted an abysmal picture of Sunderland may discourage industrialists from moving to the town. It probably frightened off Argentinian soccer star Alex Sabella and it could spark a huge migration of youngsters. So says Tory councillor Joseph Landau, who condemned last week’s BBC-2 Brass Tacks programme as one-sided and unbalanced. Despite initial revulsion, he says the episode has prompted him to look for new solutions to the town’s serious youth unemployment. Now he’s planning to set up a working

With unemployment running at twice the national average the age of leisure has come early for many of Sunderland’s youngsters. Michael is 16, on the dole, and buying a £300 guitar on HP. His recently-formed punk band, The Rejected, is receiving encouragement from the local community theatre, which is also facing government cutbacks. What use is Sunderland’s new £7-million leisure centre and pedestrian precincts to Michael’s generation?

In Sunderland the problems of youth unemployment are writ large. There are 40 percent fewer small businesses than the national average. The shipyards and coalmines are threatened with closure. Dole queues and boredom are the lot of many youngsters in the area. In Are the Kids All Right?BRASS TACKS (BBC-2, 8.5) talks to the young unemployed of Sunderland including Michael, a 16-year-old whose dreams of making it are

“BRASS TACKS” (BBC 2, 8.5), the current affairs show that has pioneered viewer participation, would like to announce a modest success. The Monday evening chance for feedback from the show – “Return Call to Brass Tacks” – has been extended until the end of the series. And calls following the weekly Tuesday evening documentary to local radio stations across the country are building up to a regular avalanche. “This week we are focusing on some kids in Sunderland,”

A SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD who’s on the dole and whose dream of making something of his life centres on a £300 guitar is one of the most interesting characters in tonight’s Brass Tacks film (BBC-2, 8.10). Although the film is about Sunderland, much of what it has to say about youth unemployment and bored youngsters could just as well apply to Liverpool. While many of the youngsters just drift from day to day and end up dispirited or in trouble, people like Michael Crawford with his new guitar and the new band he has founded